Blizzard announced today that its hotly anticipated (no hyperbole - everybody wants to play it) action RPG Diablo III will require players to be connected to a server at all times in order to play. When we say "at all times" we mean even when you are playing the single-player game. Blizzard also announced that players will be able to create up to 10 characters, which will be stored on Blizzard's servers. This is the main reason why you will need to have a constant connection to a server. This "always connected" scheme applies to all game modes including cooperative play, single player and multiplayer.

Rob Pardo, Blizzard's executive producer for Diablo III, claims that this was done to fight against the kind of hacking that previous Diablo games fell victim to:

"In both Diablo and especially in Diablo II, I think the intuition for a lot of people when they're playing the game is 'I want to make my character offline away from that scary battle net environment," said Pardo. "And then once I have this powerful character, I'll jump online.' But the problem with that concept is we can't really detect if they're cheating. They might have the capability to hack their character, things like that, so at that point we can't really allow that character to be in the battle net environment. Then they're going to have to restart their character, which is exactly what happened in Diablo II, which was really unfortunate."

"Your character will be online on battle net the moment you start playing," he continued "You can play a solo experience like you would in Diablo II, it's just your character is on Blizzard's servers and authenticated." This character can then hop into multiplayer games and trade items with others through battle net.

Chances are players will not be happy with this constant connection business, which is similar to what Ubisoft has been doing with select game titles to facilitate its horrible DRM scheme. We'll continue to follow this story and bring you reaction to it as it rolls in.

I have to agree with MechaCrash on this matter, however. Very few people seemed to blink an eye when they did this to StarCraft. Those that made a noise made nothing more than a whimper before being beaten back to their caves, never to be heard from again.

Alongside having to install third-party software, now we have to actually have an active "always-on" internet connection just to play even singleplayer. Multiplayer mode? Okay, that makes sense. But singleplayer mode requiring the internet now? Why bother playing singleplayer at all (frankly, you're not missing much in regards to storylines now, anyway).

To me, it's about the sheer inaccessibility of online activation. Only about 30% of the world have internet access (including dial-up users). This means the rest of the world is a wasted audience. Naturally, not all of them will actually play these types of video games (if any at all) but publishers are still losing potential sales due to their inclusion of online activation and "always on" modes of DRM in video games.

All I see from this is an increase in piracy; People simply refusing to buy these games because of further difficulties with the publishers choice of DRM. Hell, if I could I'd probably just pay for a game but play a pirated copy.

I think they were never heard from again because people who were not interested in multiplayer ended up just giving up on the game. I know I did. I was really excited about StarCraft but it quickly showed that it was built for the multiplayer community thus I lost interest pretty quickly.

I think more and more we are going to see 'well, our developers like multiplayer, and the people on our forums like multiplayer, so multiplayer is a mandatory component because everyone wants it!', which will result in single player stuff getting shifted more and more to the side.

While online activation is a stupid and terrible idea that maybe provides a speed bump for pirates for a day or two while inconveniencing legitimate customers forever, I don't think "only 30% of the world has internet access" is really a good argument against online activation. How much of the remaining 70% have ready access to computers?

I don't know if this will increase piracy, but that's not the number the suits should be looking at. The way I see it, any DRM scheme, in order to be a financially sound idea, has to make enough people say "I can't pirate this, therefore I will buy it" to offset the costs of implementing or licensing it, supporting the servers, dealing with the customer service problems it will cause, and making up for the customers who say "this DRM is bullshit, I will not buy this."

So basically Blizzard took StarCraft which became famous and loved for its LAN and thus stripped LAN out of StarCraft II. Now they are taking Diablo which was great for offline single player along with multiplayer and terrific mods which are played to this day...thus making you play online and banning mods outright.

Blizzard is taking a steaming pile on the people that loved these games. Simple as that.

I may be in the minority in regards to the LAN issue, but we still host LAN parties here at my house for everything from assorted fighting games, Halo, Gears, and even Starcraft from time to time.

Now if we want to get people together for Diablo (which the group I play with has pretty much said hell no after the news) we would all have to be online via my home internet at the same time and could not play through any mods that we found online or made ourselves. If I want a similar game I can play when I want and how I want, there are many other choices out there now.

I don't get how developers think that doing things to limit the playability of their titles for the legitimate users (honestly we all know those who steal it will be playing it just fine asap after release) will help them in the long run. I;m looking at you Spore when day one my PC was crashing from their DRM and had to be reformatted thus I cant play my collectors edition for fear of what it will do while an old coworker was playing it day one stollen and never had a single problem.

Blizzard was built on good will and great games. Both are needed and you can't sacrifice one then expect everyone to follow along. I'm sure the game will play great, but I can think of many times I would be unable to play this game for the simple reason that I was willing to pay for it. So just like with Starcraft, I am sadly going to have to fold on this game as well.

I apologize for the long rant, but this kind of stuff is driving me nuts. I WANT to play these games. I collect and write about them. I try and get people to learn about gaming as a community and a meaningful part of our lives. But I just can NOT defend these types of decisions. Et Tu, Blizzard?

I'm so conflicted. Growing up in a family of Mac users Blizzard's games were pretty much all I had for a long time, and consequently the company enjoys my unconditional love. But this...this is one hell of a betrayal. Please, Blizzard, don't force me to make this choice.

NO. No no no no no no no NO!!!!!!!!!!! This is the kind of Shit i will not put up with. That is a @#$% Move on their part if they choose to go through with it. I should not have to be online to play that game or any game when it comes to single player. Multi player fine i will put up with the No Lan play thing but not this. Even now not everyone has a solid internet connection which means a lot of people will not be able to play it simply because they cant get on line.

Just keep our online characters separate from our offline characters.

Part of me wouldn't be surprised if this was them testing the waters for the idea to see how much of a wave it makes. If the wave is small enough they will go through with it. Never the less, #@$% move Blizzard, #@$% move.

Agreed. I haven't played on Battle.Net in more than 10 years. I have no intention of playing these games online. And so I'll find myself turning to some form of 'piracy' just to play a game without Blizzard being a nanny.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm